Page 37 of The Bad Brother

He's proved it more than once.

Laughing a little, I jam my key in the lock and give it a twist, just as the door across the hall opens, right on cue. Pulling my key from the lock, I toss a look over my shoulder to find River’s charity case standing in the doorway behind me with what looks like the remote for my 85-inch flatscreen in her hand, wearing a Duke University sweatshirt that’s about two sizes too big and not much else. And just like that, thethings I’ve never felt beforeslam into me with the force of a wrecking ball.

Go inside.

Go inside, shut the door, and lock that fucker. Doing anything else would be a mistake.

When she realizes who she’s looking at, her dark eyes instantly widen and her cheeks flush. “What are you doing here?”

I don’t know if it’s the question or the tone she delivers it in but whatever it is, it flips my switch and I’m instantly in full-blown asshole mode. “I fucking live here.” When I say it, I realize what it is. Why I’m so pissed off. It’s because she’s been squatting across the hall for more than a week now and she never even noticed that I’m her neighbor.

“Oh.” Taking a step back, she reaches for the knob,pulling the door closer. Getting ready to slam it in my face again if I decide to lunge at her. “I didn’t know… River never?—”

“Riv didn’t tell you we’re neighbors.” Pocketing my keys, I lean my shoulder against the jamb, crossing my arms over my chest. “Surprise.” Aiming my gaze at the tops of her feet, I note the pale pink polish on her toes before I drag it up the length of her legs, letting it linger on the place where the hem of her sweatshirt brushes against the tops of her bare thighs. When I finally make it back to her face, I give her a shitty smirk. “Hope knowing that the two of us will be locked in this building together—alone—every night for the next three months doesn’t…botheryou.”

Shaking her head, she narrows those big brown eyes of hers on my face. “No, it doesn’t bother me at all.”

“Are you sure?” I touch the tip of my tongue to the corner of my mouth before giving her a cheeky grin. “Because you look pretty…bothered,Peach.”

“Maybe I just don’t like being spied on,” she says, her cheeks flushing pink.

I sweep my gaze over her again, remembering the way her nipples tightened under the thin fabric of her robe when I asked her what she’d been doing in the shower the day I cut her hot water. The day I all but admitted to her that I’ve been spying on her somehow. Tipping the corner of my mouth up in a nasty smirk, I shake my head. “Liar, liar…”

When I say it, the hinge on her jaw softens for a moment before it goes tight, the flush in her cheeks turning red with temper. “Having you for a neighbor doesn’tbotherme in the slightest,” she tells me. No longer unsure of what she’ssupposed to say or how she’s supposed to behave, she lets go of the doorknob to take a step toward me. Lifting the little black box in her hand, she shows it to me. “Just as long asyoudon’t mind 1,500 volts of electricity jammed into your balls if you develop a sense ofentitlement.” Pressing a button on the box, a loud zap of white-hot electricity sizzles between two metal connecting points at the top of the box.

It's not my TV remote.

It’s a stun gun.

Even though I started it and probably deserve getting my balls zapped for being such a prick, I do what I do best and swing back. “What kind ofdoctor—” Hanging air quotes around the word, I make sure she understands that I don’t believe the story she fed River for a single minute. “threatens their neighbor—and landlord, I might add—with bodily harm?”

Avoiding the easy answer, which isthe kind who’s tired of your bullshit, she narrows her eyes into a glare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I know you lied to River. You’re not a doctor.” I take a half-step in her direction, mostly because I’m an asshole but also because I want to see how she responds. I expect her to retreat. She doesn’t. River’s charity case stands her ground, facing me head-on. The fact that it turns me on and makes me like her a little pisses me off. “I know you’re not because women like you don’t become doctors—you become trophy wives…” Remembering Amy and the fact that she’s engaged to my brother, the corner of my lips curve in another shitty smirk. “Or mistresses.”

“Women likeme?” She arches a slim, dark brow at me like she finds me amusing. “Or women like Hanna?”

Don’t—

Before the thought even fully forms, I do exactly what we’ve both been waiting for me to do—I lunge at her.

Reaching down for the hand that’s brandishing the stun gun, I wrap my fingers around her wrist. Bringing it up, I hold it up high and away from my balls while I push her back, following her until she’s wide-eyed and trapped between me and the wall next to her front door. Knee wedged between her thighs, I reach up with my free hand and wrestle the stun gun from her grip before either of us know what I’m doing.

Empty hand pinned against the wall above her head, I move away from her just enough to toss the stun gun through my open front door. Turning back, I’m immediately greeted by a fist slamming into my cheekbone.

She’s got a solid right hook.

Impressed and more than a little turned on, I catch her fist before she can land another one. Locking my fingers around her wrist, I bring it up over her head, pinning it to the wall alongside the other one.

The whole thing takes less than fifteen seconds, from start to finish and aside from a few grunts, neither one of us has said a word.

Jesus Christ, what are you doing? Do you want to go back to prison, asshole? Because this is how you go back to prison.

Shit.

I’m about to let her go. Shove her back into her apartment and slam the door between us because no matter how angry I am, I never intended to dothis.

Before I can do any of those things, she flips her glare up to meet mine, cheeks flushed with temper. “Don’t tellme—I can scream as loud as I want because no one can hear me?”

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